How best to set up Wordpress categories and sub-categories for SEO? (local business)

[Nick Lotter]

Hi all,

I am building a website using Wordpress for a local business. I need some help on how best to set up the website so that the categories are indexed, but only indexed once, i.e. I don't want Google to see it as duplicate content.

The goal is to rank the website on Google page 1 for main categories and sub-categories.

What I have done is created main categories and sub-categories. There are about 10 main categories, and each category has 5 - 15 sub categories (there are a large number of different services and products offered by the company).

Using these categories, I am making a custom menu which will be a drop-down menu on the top of the website. All the main categories in the menu, with the sub-categories in drop-down menus from the main menu.

The client and I specifically want to do this with categories rather than pages, because of the nature of the services is that new ones will be added regularly, and some may be taken out from time to time. The client doesn't want to edit pages, he wants to be able to simply delete and add posts which are tied to specific categories instead.

Now I want to be able to rank the website for all of the category titles and sub-category titles.

I have set the permalink structure to /%category%/%postname%/ and I have set the META Robots plugin to allow the categories to be indexed.

For example, if I make a post for a sub-category called DJ Services which is in main category Wedding Services, I want to post it under both categories. If I make 5 posts for 5 different DJ's and only allocate the posts to the DJ Services category, the site won't have any content for the main category keyword - Wedding Services. However, if I allocate the posts to both categories, the same content will be indexed for both categories and Google may penalize the site for duplicate content.

The problem here is, in this example, Wedding Services is one of the site's main keywords. But because there 10 - 15 different sub-categories, which the visitors must be able to choose from to find exactly which wedding services they are looking for, I am not sure how to make sure that Google is going to index the relevant content for all those sub-categories under the main keyword - Wedding Services - without having the content indexed twice.

Is this even possible, or am I smoking something?

Any help here will be appreciated in a major way!

[Nick Lotter]

I should add that if I set "Wedding Services" as the parent category for the "DJ Services" category, then clicking on the "Wedding Services" menu link will show up all posts in the DJ Services category as well, even if those posts were only allocated to the DJ Services category when they were published.

BUT,

Will Google recognise that content under the Wedding Services keyword as well as the DJ Services keyword, while not counting it as duplicate content?

[Nick Lotter]

I should add that if I set "Wedding Services" as the parent category for the "DJ Services" category, then clicking on the "Wedding Services" menu link will show up all posts in the DJ Services category as well, even if those posts were only allocated to the DJ Services category when they were published.

BUT,

Will Google recognise that content under the Wedding Services keyword as well as the DJ Services keyword, while not counting it as duplicate content?

[Nick Lotter]

Hi guys, sorry for the bump, but I really need your input on this. Is there anybody who could offer some input?